I was out playing with my new camera today and finally got a decent shot of the baby robins in a nest at the end of our driveway. I did retouch this photo a bit with a contrast mask to reduce the contrast. I'm going to try to take some more pictures in better light tomorrow. But, thought I'd post this one. I think the babies are about a week old.

I'm not sure it's a good candidate for photo-art - it mostly looks like a big pile of feathers if you ask me! ;) But if you want to try to do something with it, have fun!

Jeanie

Another blast from the past!

~Danny~

I'd be proud to have taken this pic.

I overdid the contrast between the effects a little (wish I'd used masking instead of selections)

1. duped the background. selected babies and nest--invert selection. impressionist ch textured watercolor wash.
2. new HSL layer. reduced saturation (about 50) and darkened slightly.
3. topped with a pattern fill layer in soft light
4. played around with dup layers, blending modes and opacity to try and soften overdone contrast between photo and photoart sections.

I never can resist a nestful of baby birds. Robins build a nest on our front door wreath every spring, and then we find ourselves not using that door so we won't disturb them.
Here I was trying for a colored pencil effect.
First I kicked up the hue/saturation, also the contrast
Ran the sketcher action on one layer, then color range, highlights, delete, and set that layer to multiply
The next layer down, I used Impressionist BSOB and set it to screen
Next layer, Impressionist fine scribbles and set to lighten
Then two bottom layers seemed to be needed for depth, one set to normal, the other to multiply.
Finally I added some color and white highlights with a paint brush and added a texture.
It looks a little better full size here in my PBase gallery:
http://www.pbase.com/image/37605598

A watercolor effect with smart blur and buzz filter.

Raniday, I love your creation, esp. the enlarged one on pbase.
Tried a sketch effect, photocopy layer, some brushwork and finally texture-grain-speckle.

they're absolutely adorable :pleased: thanks for this wonderful photo! :)

It's officially Spring, and it's time to bring out the baby birds again! :grin: